Dismounted operations, such as combat operations, disaster relief operations, and peacekeeping operations, typically include members (e.g., soldiers of a company unit) who are unevenly distributed over a geographical area and may operate in an environment where an external communication infrastructure is broken or unavailable. These operations may, therefore, employ ad-hoc communication networks to disseminate information, such as control messages and situation-awareness messages, among the members of the unit. As new members join the operation, they may register to the network and start communicating with other members of the unit.
Typically, communication networks supporting the above-mentioned operations cater to many diverse requirements, such as consistency with other network protocols (e.g., TCP/IP or UDP), consistency with many security protocols (e.g., HAIPE), or the ability to handle video communications or large file transfers. As a result, devices encompassing these diverse functionalities are typically impractical in size (e.g., too large to be easily carried by every member of the unit, for example in a pocket) and/or too expensive to be provided to every member of the unit.
In some cases, such devices fail to perform any particular function well and leave the members of the unit without communication support. For example, in some instances, the networks employ channel access mechanisms where more than one node tries to communicate over the same channel (e.g., using the same frequency) at the same time. Consequently, data-collisions occur, which often results in multiple re-transmissions and unnecessary bandwidth consumption.
In addition, in many operations, members of the unit are unevenly dispersed in an area such that each member is unable to directly communicate with every other member. In such a case, one way to deliver a message to all members of the unit is for every member to re-transmit a received message to all other members that are in the re-transmitting member's direct communication range. This approach results, however, in an unreasonable bandwidth consumption, with too many nodes receiving multiple copies of the same message.
There exists a need, therefore, for a new communication protocol for ad-hoc networks.